The man tried and acquitted in Denver’s infamous “Father’s Day Massacre” case has died after living a shunned existence for 21 years and recently suffering from dementia.

But James King’s passing has not quelled speculation about whether he got away with killing four bank guards on June 16, 1991.

The former Denver police sergeant and United Bank of Denver security guard was put on trial in the summer of 1992, accused of killing Phillip Lee Mankoff, Scott Raymond McCarthy, William Rogers McCullum Jr. and Todd Allen Wilson.

On one side of the debate over King’s guilt or innocence, Scott Robinson, who along with Walter Gerash formed a potent defense legal team, said the jury cleared King for good reason.

“There were insurmountable problems with the prosecution’s case. There was substantial evidence at the trial that it could not be him,” Robinson said.

But one of the prosecutors at the King trial and the father of victim Todd Wilson say they have no doubt that police had the right guy.

“Good riddance as far as I’m concerned,” said John Wilson. “I still do (believe King was guilty). There were too many facts.”

Former Denver prosecutor Bill Buckley, who had put King on trial with a seemingly iron-clad case with five eyewitnesses and damning circumstantial evidence, hadn’t changed his opinion in the 21 years since the trial.

“I believe he did it,” Buckley said. “Unless you hear he confided in someone, he took his secret to the grave.”

Last week, a man identifying himself only as one of King’s three sons was painting a sign in the driveway of 665 Juniper St. in Golden, which is clogged with older trucks, SUVs and cars in different stages of repair. King’s wife, who stood by him throughout the trial, stayed with him until her death in 2009. King’s son said his dad died of dementia on May 21 at a nearby hospice.

“For me growing up, my dad being a policeman, whenever I saw someone had been charged with a crime I just believed they were guilty,” he said. “But they just twisted and manipulated the truth (in his father’s trial.)”

His father’s case changed his perspective, he said.

After King was cleared of murder charges, he lived a hermit’s existence in his small, single-story home, constructing elaborate model train sets and scenes, but giving no outward signs that he was spending $197,080 in ill-gotten bank loot, Robinson said.

The FBI watched him for years, Robinson said. Potentially, federal prosecutors could have charged him with human rights violations without double jeopardy being a factor, Buckley said.

King rarely left his home. When he did, the man with a distinctive 1950s-era buzz haircut was always recognized. The looks he got from people betrayed their doubts about him.

“He was absolutely angry and bitter about people in the police department who turned on him and misread the evidence,” Robinson said.

The evidence included that five of six bank employees the killer confronted inside a “money counting room” identified King as the killer; he had shaved his mustache off shortly after the bank theft and had admitted that he disposed of his .38-caliber police service revolver.

The killer left no trace behind, retrieving all shells and wiping away any fingerprints. Prosecutors noted that King had often videotaped crime scenes. He had also admitted he was in downtown Denver that morning searching for a chess club that didn’t exist. But the ammo that killed the four guards were the most compelling evidence, Buckley said.

When Denver police sergeants handed out ammo to officers, the policemen would put them in “ammo buckets.” Over time, as the department bought different brands of rounds, the cartridges would get mixed together. When officers loaded their guns, they would be a mixture of brands.

The 17 bullets taken from the bodies of the bank guards were from four or five separate brands, Buckley said. Anyone else would normally load a gun with ammo from a box of 50 rounds of the same brand, he said.

“The one thing he couldn’t do is dig the bullets out of the bodies,” Buckley said.

The defense strategy, brought to living rooms around the country by fledging Court TV, was gimmicky at times.

Robinson demonstrated the lack of reliability of eyewitness testimony by asking witnesses of the bank robbery to identify pictures of a man disguised only with a hat, sunglasses and a mustache. Witnesses couldn’t name one of America’s most famous figures: actor Harrison Ford.

But the meat of the defense was evidence pointing to an accomplice, one who triggered an alarm at 4 a.m. in a basement storage room. One of the guards clicked off the alarm signal in the guard room, Robinson said, indicating that guard knew who was hiding in the storage room, possibly because he was involved in the robbery.

James Prado, the former head of bank security, became the defense’s star witness.

He testified that because of security changes in the bank that came after King no longer worked there, anyone not familiar with them, including King, would have been caught in a security “man trap” when he tried to leave the bank.

“My sneaking suspicion was (the killer) was a guard who came after King, and he had an accomplice,” Robinson said.

But whoever it was, he added, it would take a corroborated confession to bring him to justice because the defense could always argue that the killer was the man police have always suspected: James King.

Kirk Mitchell is a general assignment reporter at The Denver Post who focuses on criminal justice stories. He began working at the newspaper in 1998, after writing for newspapers in Mesa, Ariz., and Twin Falls, Idaho, and The Associated Press in Salt Lake City. Mitchell first started writing the Cold Case blog in Fall 2007, in part because Colorado has more than 1,400 unsolved homicides.

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